AN OVERVIEW. Road Accidents in Delhi 2015

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Joshua Darrell Quinn
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1 1 AN OVERVIEW Road accident injuries claim more than 1.2 million lives each year and have a huge impact on health and development. In addition to deaths on the roads, up to 50 million people incur non-fatal injuries each year as a result of road traffic crashes, while there are additional indirect health consequences that are associated with this growing epidemic. As vehicle ownership grows, many countries face the twin problems of traffic congestion and rising vehicle tailpipe emissions, resulting in higher rate of respiratory illness. Rising car ownership has also resulting in reduced physical activities such as walking and cycling, with associated health consequences. (Source: GLOBAL STATUS REPORT ON ROAD SAFETY 2015 : WHO) INTERNATIONAL TRENDS According to World Road Statistics 2015 published by International Road Federation, Geneva, There is lower incidence of deaths per 100,000 in the countries Australia, Canada, France, Japan, Republic of Korea, U.S.A, Poland, Portugal etc. except Russian Federation while comparing it with India. Incidence of road accident related deaths were higher in Russian Federation (19) in comparison to India (11) during the calendar year (Chart 1.1) 1

2 Injury accidents per lakh of population in India was substantially lower at around (40) during 2013 when compared with other developed countries. United States of America reported the highest figure in respect of injury accidents per lakh population at (513) followed by Japan (494), Republic of Korea (429), Germany (361), and Canada (348). Niger reported the lowest figure in respect of injury accidents per lakh population at (36). A cross country comparison of incidence of road accident related deaths and injury accidents of select countries are given in Table 1.1. NATIONAL TRENDS During the year 2015 in India people died and 5,00,279 got injured in 5,01,423 road accidents. Census of India 2011 reported 53 million-plus cities. Out of these 53 cities, 50 reported road accident data for These 50 cities accounted for a share of 22.1 percent in total road accidents in the country, 11.3 percent in total persons killed in road accidents and 16.4 percent in total persons injured. The fatal accidents in terms of percentage remained the same at 12.8 during 2014 and This is depicted in Table

3 A n i m p o r ta nt a c c i d e nt re l ate d parameter is the extent of accident severity (road accident related deaths per 100 accidents). It varies from a low of 2.6 percent in Mumbai to a high of 66.0 percent in Amritsar (Table 1.3). The other cities which reported a very high accident severity included Ludhiana (55.4 percent), Varanasi (47.9 percent), Asansol Durgapur (47.1 percent), Allahabad (47.0 percent), and Jamshedpur (45.2 percent). Out of these fifty Million plus cities Mumbai reported the highest number of road accidents (23,468) during 2015 as against (22,570) in 2014, while Delhi reported the highest number of Deaths (1,622) due to road accidents during 2015 as against 1,671 during Accident severity in terms of percentage share of 50 Million plus cities was 14.9 per cent in 2015 as against 15.0 per cent in

4 TRENDS IN DELHI Delhi, the capital city, has the area of 1483 square km. and has the population of around 181 lacs. The population of the country has been increasing at a fast rate. This rising trend is also affecting the national capital region of Delhi including its neighbouring towns adversely. The fast pace of economic development and consequent growing opportunities in and around the city has further boosted up migration of population where a huge number of people continuously migrate into the city in search of employment and livelihood. With growth of population, traffic s c e n a r i o a l s o b e c o m e s m o r e challenging particularly with regard to accidents and to an extent it is a reason for growing accidents. During the year road accidents occurred in Delhi in which 8258 people got injured and 1622 people lost their lives. The accidents are also linked directly to the increase in the vehicular population. However, with the increased presence and tactical deployment of traffic staff, traffic engineering and other steps taken after in-depth analysis of causes of accidents, the current traffic management strategies/techniques have proved to be effective in reducing number of accidents. There was decrease in number of fatal accidents in Delhi for the sixth consecutive year. Some characteristics and problems: The numbers of vehicles have reached to such an extent that it causes difficulty in smooth movement of traffic at many places particularly during the peak hours. Parking problem is associated with the vehicle boom. There are over 88.2 Lakh registered vehicles of all categories in Delhi for the year The yearly compounding growth of vehicular population for the year 2015 is 6.44%. Private transport viz. private cars and two wheelers constitute 96% of all registered vehicles in Delhi. On the contrary, all categories of buses, which a r e m a j o r s o u r c e o f p u b l i c transportation, form less than 0.5% of total vehicular population. Public transport is not effective in Delhi as people use their own vehicles thereby over-crowding the city. It has been observed that a majority of people of Delhi do not strictly follow traffic rules and regulations. Large number of prosecution figures of almost all types of traffic violations in the city is witness to this fact. More than 34 lakh challans were issued against the violators in the year Even this figure is small in comparison to the violations being committed on daily basis with a substantial number of them going undetected and also in comparison to number of registered vehicles in the city. Another fact is that the non-delhi destined commercial vehicles also use the city roads to criss-cross the capital thereby causing more congestion on roads and accidents too which could be avoided if the long pending projects of Eastern and Western Peripheral Expressways around the city are completed. 4

5 Another trend of serious traffic concern is the ever-growing congestion, and traffic bottlenecks, which has increased travel time implying that it takes more time for the people to reach to their destinations than usual. This leads to violation of traffic rules subsequently increase in road rage incidents. A large number of accidents involve pedestrians as most vulnerable victims. In 2015, 42.1% of the total people killed in road accidents were pedestrians. Scooter/Motorcycle riders were the second most vulnerable accident prone victims constituting 34.9% of the total persons killed. It is also evident from analysis that accidents trend to increase after 8 p.m till 2 a.m on all days of week as during t h e s e h i g h c o n g e s t i o n h o u rs, commercial vehicles also start moving in Delhi, due to lifting of restrictions of no entry for them. Drunken driving, dark spots also contribute to it. Statistics also show that National highways and major roads of the city are more accidents prone due to heavy movement of commercial as well as other vehicles. The drunken driving has become a common trend in Metro City s life. It is a very dangerous trend, found mostly in youngsters, which seriously endangers everybody s life and safety. This is evident from the fact that despite continuous prosecution and special drives against drunken driving, the number of this category of violators is not going down. This often leads to accidents. A drunken person can be an accused as well as a victim. During the year 2015, a total of challans for drunken driving were issued. Road accidents are an outcome of the interplay of various factors like road network, vehicle and human population, the planning and facilities for different road users, the development of public transport system and the life style of city people. These all together characterize the victims, offending vehicle, time and places of the accidents. The related scenario in Delhi is discussed in detail in subsequent chapters. 5

3. Trends in accidents, injuries, fatalities, motor vehicles & road network

3. Trends in accidents, injuries, fatalities, motor vehicles & road network 2.2 In economic terms, the cost of road crash injuries is estimated at roughly 1 percent of gross national product (GNP) in low-income countries, 1.5 percent in middle-income countries and 2 percent in